Truth in man's death is black and white

Usually, when I tell someone's story, there's no need to mention race.

Usually, a story's a story.

But not today.

Because what happened to Rogers Washington happened to him because he is
black.

There's no other explanation.

Washington is 49, a South Florida native who was born in Fort Pierce and
moved to Pompano Beach when he was a boy. He is the third of four
children, raised for years by a single mother. He and I are about the
same age, both born in 1956 and both coming of age, so to speak, in the
'70s.

Our lives, though, couldn't have been more different, and no one
understands this more than Washington.

Two weeks ago this coming Tuesday, Washington and his close friend,
Robert Moore, 62, went out fishing. Washington has worked for many years
as a commercial fisherman on his own boat, a 22-foot Cobia. Indeed, the
two men were perhaps more comfortable on the water than on land. But that
day, in the ocean offshore from Boca Raton, the two Broward County men
were very unlucky.

A wave swamped the boat, eventually sinking the 22-footer, sending
Washington and his friend into the ocean.

They initially regrouped quickly. Washington blew a metal whistle, the
kind they tell you to keep on board for this very reason. Moore blew the
foghorn. And they had a white plastic cooler lid that floated.

Plus, there was a boat about a quarter of a mile away.

"They were fishing for dolphin, same as us," Washington said.

The boat, he said, began to troll closer.

"I knew I was going to be saved because this boat was coming right toward
me," he said. "I was blowing my horn."

The situation worsened considerably about then. Moore, 62, began to foam
around the edges of the mouth, so Washington held him and did CPR.

Washington says there was a shark nearby, and Moore either had "a heart
attack or a stroke or a panic attack."

He says he told his friend to hang in there, that boat was going to save
them.

"Then I administered CPR for the last time to my friend, and that boat
just went right past me," Washington said.

Rogers Washington is quite positive the white boaters would have picked
them up if they hadn't been black.

"No doubt at all in my mind," he said. "What them people did was
prejudice."

Since this is sickening, I quizzed him, relentlessly.

Isn't it possible they didn't see him? Maybe they didn't hear the
distress calls?

A quarter of a mile's a long way, I insist.

"They were waving at me, ma'am," he said. "They were waving at me. They
were probably only 300 feet away.

"I'm quite sure they heard the horn," he said Thursday.

Washington said that several days before this happened, the bodies of two
Haitians had been found in nearby water.

"I'm a black male, ma'am," he said. "They thought I was a Haitian
immigrant."

After the first boat passed, Washington's friend died. Washington said he
let him go so he could swim toward shore. "I know he was deceased. I held
him for 45 minutes."

It was hard to decipher the time out there, something I can only imagine.

"I was swimming as hard as I could toward shore," he says. And another
boat, a 40-foot sailboat, came onto the horizon, eventually moving so
close that Washington could see a white couple on board.

"The guy didn't have no shirt on and was waving at me," he said. "What
they did was inhumane. I seen this with my own eyes. I ain't going to lie
about nothing."

They, too, he says, kept going.

A third boat eventually stopped and brought Washington to shore. Both men
on board were white.

"Those two guys are the best," he said. "God sent me those two guys.
Those two guys are angels."

They're doing an autopsy on Moore, so there's no official word whether he
died of a heart attack.

The news clipping about Rogers Washington and his friend, Robert Moore,
sat on my desk for a good week. I'd pick it up each day, read it, get
myself riled up.

I rationalized. There had to be some other reason those boaters didn't
stop.